If you’ve navigated to the homepage of Verve Money, or you’ve happened to see one of our ads on a train or telephone booth recently, you’ve probably caught the words ‘Money, Power, Freedom’. 

If the phrase makes you feel a little uncomfortable, then you’re not alone. When we spoke to one member about the slogan, they told us this: “Money and Freedom yes, but ‘Power’.. do we really need to talk about Money and Power – isn’t that an outdated way of looking at things?”.

The answer for us is we absolutely need to be talking about money and freedom, but at this critical moment in our history, we also need to be talking about money and power – the power we have, and the power we need to grow and flex, to build a better future for ourselves, our community and our planet.

And when it comes to the purpose and mission of the Verve Money investing app and our community, those three words encapsulate so much. 

At Verve we exist to support our members to build wealth and invest in a better world. And for us, ‘wealth means having an abundance of the things we value in our lives. This to us is freedom – the freedom to live our best lives. And of course, as an organisation founded by women, centred around the financial services needs of women+.*’

* Women+ is an expression that we use at Verve to centre all women including cis and trans women, and to be inclusive of anyone who identifies with that term. More broadly we use Women+ when we speak of our community that centres women, but also includes men and nonbinary people who believe in our vision of equality.

We understand intrinsically how the relationship between money and power can both oppress our freedom and help liberate it. 

While the concept of linking freedom and power to money has been around for some time, and with a range of different interpretations (the writings of 19th century philosopher and economist Karl Marx and 1940’s feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir are just 2 examples), relationships between inclusivity, equality, finances and financing, and power structures, have in our view never been more important.

Firstly, together those words acknowledge the struggle that many of our community have faced in building wealth and the barriers they must overcome. In today’s society our freedom to live the lives that bring us the most fulfilment relies on us having the finances to support ourselves, but there are power imbalances that impact our ability as individuals to access those financial resources. In particular in this country, we think about the intergenerational and ongoing economic inequality faced by First Nations people, people with a disability and people from migrant backgrounds.

Next we zoom out, and we see how money buys power and how that power today is overwhelmingly not with everyday people. The richest 1% control half the world’s wealth in a way that is wrecking our planet. We know that more money is buying more power and with growing inequality in many parts of the world, that becomes extremely problematic. 

As Author Naomi Klein, so eloquently put it in her book ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate’: “It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when an elite minority was enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s.”

But with all these huge challenges Money, Power, Freedom is also a rally cry for hope and optimism – and that’s why we have chosen it. 

We want to make money and investing inclusive and feel like a space for those who have typically felt excluded from wealth building. We want our members to feel free and unshackled by the pressures of money stress and to feel empowered by their financial decisions. We believe that there is power in a community of people coming together to redefine what wealth looks like, and we do this by centering our app and community around achieving life goals, rather than getting wealthy for the sake of it. And ultimately, together with our members we hope that we can change the conversation about what it means to be financially free, to have enough, and to be living a truly wealthy life. 

Perhaps most importantly, there is power in investing with people with aligned values. While it’s easy to feel powerless in the face of great global challenges, the reality is that women in Australia already control over $1 trillion in wealth through their superannuation and other assets, that’s more than enough to fund the entire transition of Australia’s economy away from fossil fuels to renewables, many times over. As individuals and as a collective we already hold great power – we just need to grow it and flex it. 

In truth, we can thank the Victorian Women’s Trust and a brilliant poster they gifted us some years back for the inspo. There has been a picture with the words Money, Power, Freedom and an image of a group of women marching on a wall in our office stairwell ever since.. motivating the team as they start the steep ascent to work each morning. It means we are constantly thinking about the relationship between those words and the relationship to the world we want to build by doing finance differently.

Our hope is that these 3 simple words will make a lasting difference. To motivate others to believe that regardless of their background or gender, that they too can invest to build wealth; do it ethically and with purpose; and contribute to a powerful movement of people improving their own lives, and investing in a better future for all.

A fairer, more equitable society can change the world. That’s a fact. 

So join us in making it happen, you’re welcome here. 

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